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RE: Going native in USA Today

Stow the mower. Going 'native' isn't cheap, but it can set you free. 
USA Today; Arlington, Va.; Apr 12, 2002; Craig Wilson; 

HAMILTON, Ohio Americans mow 31 million acres of lawn every year. It
takes 300 million gallons of gas and 1 billion hours to complete the
chore. And for this privilege they will spend $17.4 billion on
everything from pesticides (70 million pounds) to lawn tractors.

Warren Klink thinks that's insanity. And with a drought looming for much
of the country this summer, it's double insanity.

Klink is a landscape architect who runs a small firm here called Urban
Thickets. He proudly proclaims it's a "lawn reduction company." A little
quirky, a bit mischievous and highly likable, Klink is referred to
fondly within the industry as "an onion among the orchids." He has been
known to put up a stink.

He covers his mouth and laughs when he says something verging on the
outrageous.

He points at huge expanses of lawn as he drives through the Cincinnati
suburbs and shakes his head in sadness. "Mono-culture to the extreme,"
he calls it.

And if he spots something that really gets him going -- like a lawn-care
specialist in a uniform applying pesticides -- he'll slap the dashboard
of his VW.

"What's the purpose of all this?" he asks. "Are they trying to subdue
nature? What's their goal?"

Klink is part of a small but growing band of landscape architects who
are slowly converting Americans to the belief that not every inch of
their lawn needs to be manicured. Actually, you don't need a lawn at
all, he says.

Embraced by homeowners with little extra time or water -- the movement
began in earnest when drought conditions surfaced a decade ago -- it's
most popular in the Midwest, where prairie grasses once reigned supreme.

Experts agree that letting your yard go natural makes more sense in some
places than others. Prairie grasses on the prairie, natural grasses in
Florida, for instance. One planned community on Florida's panhandle,
Seaside, doesn't even allow homeowners to plant lawn grass because it's
not a native plant.

This natural look doesn't necessarily come cheap: "Hardscaping" - - the
term used for moving earth and introducing rocks and boulders - - can
run into the thousands. Then there's the cost of native plantings and
labor. But advocates say the overhaul pays for itself within a few
seasons.

Klink is proud of the fact he was the first to display dandelions at the
Cincinnati Flower Show, where he'll mount another unkempt exhibit later
this month.

His "let's-get-back-to-nature" prairie displays don't win everyone over,
of course. When he took it to the Chelsea Flower Show in London last
year, he chuckles that one fellow exhibitor called it "awful," while
another added, "I'm not frightfully fond of grass that isn't mown."

But Cincinnati businessman Pat Pawling is. He lives on more than three
acres just northwest of town, and before Klink came along he was
spending almost six hours mowing his grass every week, and that didn't
include the trimming. Today, lawn care is down to two hours for
everything.

Large expanses of his lawn near the woods that surround his property
have been returned to their natural state, and a huge island of tall
grasses and thistles now sits in the middle of the front lawn.

"The thistles, they just show up, and they're free!" says Klink with an
almost childlike glee.

"In the beginning, the neighbors said, 'Pat, what the hell are you
doing?' " Pawling admits. His wife wondered, too. Now, everyone seems to
understand. "Each year, I like it more and more."

While Klink thinks of Pawling as one of his success stories, he's also
proud of a 10-acre site he landscaped over in ritzy Indian Hill, one of
Cincinnati's most manicured and expensive enclaves.

"There's no mowable lawn to speak of," he says of the landscaping, which
includes vast plots of native trees and shrubs.

Ken Druse, author of Making More Plants: The Science, Art and Joy of
Propagation, doesn't know Klink, but the two have a lot in common. Druse
also rails against America's obsession with lawns in this month's issue
of Dwell magazine, but then confesses he has one himself. Well, sort of.

"My 90-foot-diameter shag rug of a lawn could best be described as a
cropped meadow. It's composed of many kinds of native and exotic grass
species and plenty of weeds -- all duking it out for space," he says of
his New Jersey spread. "People spend a fortune killing what I put into
my lawn."

He says he never feeds his lawn, never waters it, and views lawns now as
"changing landscapes."

"Lawns are getting smaller and smaller and smaller," he says.
"Unfortunately, golf courses are getting bigger and bigger, and I find
that very frightening."

Purple coneflowers, Prairie Smoke

There's a longstanding tradition in the Midwest of such let-it-
grow-wild rabble-rousers. Lorrie Otto founded her Wild Ones group in
Milwaukee almost three decades ago, urging neighbors to go natural
(their lawns, that is), and now chapters are sprinkled around the
country.

About the same time, Prairie Nursery was founded in Westfield, Wis.
"Twenty years ago, we were the weirdoes," says company president Neil
Diboll. "Everything we grew back then was a weed, or what the public
thought was a weed.

"We couldn't give the purple coneflower away back then. Now, I can't
grow it fast enough."

These days, Diboll sees customers asking for help on reducing their
lawns, or eliminating them completely. "I'm not anti-lawn," he says.
"You just need a balance."

Acres of grass, he says, are now being replaced by native grasses with
exotic names like Prairie Dropsee, Royal Catchfly, Prairie Smoke and
Meadow Blazing Star.

Diboll says his customers want but two things: "To create a natural
wildlife habitat, and to get chemicals out of their landscapes."

Diana Balmori, co-author of Redesigning the American Lawn, thinks this
is more than just a "glimmer of hope."

"People are definitely changing their plantings," she says.

Staid Yankee towns like Milford, Conn., are handing out prizes to
citizens who do the best job varying what's in their yard, those who
remove the always-thirsty grass and replace it with more eco- friendly
plantings. "That would have been unheard of 20 years ago," Balmori says.

Amber waves, from sea to sea?

Balmori is not naive, however, about America's love affair with grass.
"Front lawns, especially, are still the most powerful piece of real
estate in America."

And Doug Fender of Turfgrass Producers International, conceding that
people might think he's a bit biased in matters of the lawn, says he
sees "no significant evidence that the American lawn is shrinking,"
other than larger houses being put on smaller lots.

Virginia Scott Jenkins, author of The Lawn: A History of an American
Obsession, thinks it might be a bit early to jump on the ban-the-lawn
bandwagon, and says she isn't convinced that most Americans are ready to
completely walk away from their lush outdoor carpets.

"Lawns are still strongly rooted in the American psyche. I've seen some
movement toward xeriscapes (those needing little moisture), but not
much."

In her book, she outlines a number of cases in which homeowner
associations went to court to stop someone from returning their lawn to
a natural state. "But the homeowner always won," says Jenkins, noting
that's slowed down other such suits.

Plus, adds Beth Young of the American Society of Landscape Architects,
fewer and fewer complaints are being lodged because people aren't just
throwing around wildflower seeds and walking away, hoping for the best.

"If I had to speculate on why there doesn't seem to be a neighborhood
witch hunt when a homeowner goes grassless, it would be that the
alternative is intriguing and well-designed now," she says. "Paving
stones spaced with moss look a lot better than untended or
over-manicured grass any day. Also, in many of the designs I've seen,
the landscape architect includes a strip of turf as a border. It helps
the alternative lawn fit in with the neighbors."

Water concerns vs. conformity

And now there are even more initiatives that encourage lawn alternatives
on a civic scale scattered around the country.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority gives "Water Hero" awards to
businesses that install xeriscapes rather than traditional lawns;
homeowners in Glendale, Ariz., get rebates for buying low-water shrubs;
the water district officials in Sharon, Mass., educated residents about
alternatives when its wells started drying up; and Atlanta has a
backyard creekside habitat program in cooperation with the National
Wildlife Foundation.

All this is music to Warren Klink's ears.

"It's a gradual thing," he says. "It's like racism. It takes generations
to change people's minds. I think this is more ingrained, though.
There's tremendous pressure to conform to your neighbors. Tremendous
pressure.

"But it's really nothing but destruction of the natural environment,"
Klink says with a sigh. "It's obsession, coupled with money, and that
always causes a lot of problems."

TEXT OF INFO BOX BEGINS HERE

Wild look can be wildly expensive

Though many homeowners opt for the natural look to save time and money,
the upfront investment can be steep.

Cutting the mowing time for Pat Pawling's three-acre lawn in suburban
Cincinnati by two-thirds "cost him nothing," Warren Klink says proudly.
But to transform the lawn into a natural landscape, here's what Klink
charged:

Bed design: $1,500

Consulting: $200

Labor and materials: $13,000

Total: $14,700

For a more traditional expanse of green, there are annual costs. Here's
what TruGreen ChemLawn charges for a year's worth of lawn services,
including mowing, on a comparable three acres:

Fertilization, weed control: $1,800

Mowing, trimming, edging: $3,780

Bed maintenance: $1,960

Total: $7,540

Sources: Urban Thickets, TruGreen ChemLawn

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